Be Opened!

Jesu Juva

St. Mark 7:31-37                                                            

September 5, 2021

Proper 18B                  

 Dear saints of our Savior~

          The Prophet Isaiah wrote this concerning the Messiah:  Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.  And seven centuries later the crowds declared concerning Jesus:  He has done all things well.  He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.  Prophecy given; prophecy fulfilled.

          They brought to Jesus a man who could neither hear nor speak.  And the people begged Jesus to lay His hands on him.  After all, that’s what healers were supposed to do.  That was the prescribed protocol for those with gifts of healing in Jesus’ day.  The healer was supposed to lay his hands on the person in need of healing.  The people, it seems, had a plan.  They had a preconceived notion about how Jesus was supposed to do His thing.  He was supposed to do what every other healer did—lay hands on the sick person and pray. 

          We sometimes approach Jesus in the same way.  We not only present the problem, we also present the solution.  “Here’s what I want, Lord, and here’s how I think you should do it.”  We’re kind of like those kids who send out their Christmas list via e-mail, complete with links to the websites that sell the desired items.  “Here’s what I want, now just click and purchase.”  But here’s the thing:  the more you specify a gift, the less of a “gift” it becomes.  It turns into more of a transaction—a bargain, really—which is precisely how our Old Adam loves to deal with God.  Lord, give me patience, but don’t let me suffer.  Lord, give me wisdom, but spare me the pain of experience.  Lord, help my teenagers to turn out okay, but don’t expect me to teach them the faith at home.  Make no mistake, God wants to hear our problems and needs.  But the solutions to those problems should be left entirely up to Him.  Faith trusts that God will always give what is needed, according to His limitless wisdom and love.

          Jesus didn’t deal with the deaf and mute man according to the people’s preconceived notions.  Jesus took him aside privately, away from the crowd.  That poor man’s plight would not become entertainment for the crowd (or a TicToc video).  The man had likely lived his entire life on the fringes of society.  Unable to speak, unable to hear, he lived in a terrible isolation.  Most people probably simply ignored him.  That’s what often happens in our world with people who can’t process language and communication.  To our shame, we ignore them.  Because they can’t offer us anything in terms of praise or instruction or companionship, we ignore them.  We de-value them.  We leave them to their terrible isolation—and leave it up to government programs to keep them going.

          Stroke victims are often forced to deal with the frustration and futility of not being able to speak.  I once called on a widow who had just suffered a terrible stroke.  Although I had never met her before, it was obvious that she could understand every word I was saying.  And it was equally obvious that she couldn’t speak a single syllable of what she desperately wanted to say to me.  A few days earlier you would have said that she was sharp as a tack.  But no more; for her language had left her.  As she struggled to speak, the fear and frustration on her face were almost unbearable; and after a while, all she could do was weep in silence.  It was heart-breaking.  It happened 28 years ago; and I’ll never forget the terrible helplessness of that moment.

          That woman’s helplessness wasn’t so different from our helplessness before God.  We are born deaf—deaf to the Word of God.  Ears that can hear are a great gift from God.  But what do we do?  We close our ears to God’s Word and God’s will for our lives.  His commandments routinely fall on our “deaf” ears.  We’re equally deaf to the cries of those around us—those whom God has given us to love and care for.  We just don’t want to be bothered with the pain of others; and our ears are exceptionally good at tuning it out.   

          Likewise, we are born mute—unable to sing the pure praises of God, unwilling to declare the goodness of God.  Voices that speak and sing and pray are a great gift from God.  But by nature we prefer to use our voices for careless complaining, for angry words, for shifting the blame, and, sometimes, to inflict more pain than any weapon ever could.  We can hear, but we don’t hear what we need to hear.  We can talk, but we don’t say what needs to be spoken.

          God must act.  If our ears are ever going to hear God’s Word and believe it and take it to heart—if our voices will ever truly sing God’s praises and support the people we’re supposed to love—then God must act.  He must do for us—He must do for you—what He did for the man in today’s text.

          Jesus refused to ignore that man in his isolation and desperation.  Jesus took him to a private place.  And Jesus did a strange thing.  He put His fingers into the

deaf man’s ears.  He spit and touched the man’s tongue.  He looked up to heaven.  And as Jesus did all this, He was communicating a message that couldn’t be missed:  I know what’s wrong with you, brother!  I know the pain of your isolation.  You’ve got ears that don’t hear and a tongue that doesn’t work and I am going to do something about that.  I’m lifting my eyes to heaven; because that’s where I came from to be here, now, with you. 

          And then Jesus spoke one simple word:  Ephphatha!  “Be opened!”  Did the deaf man hear this “ephphatha?”  Were these the first sound waves to enter his newly opened ears?  Or did he read the Savior’s lips as the word was spoken?  We don’t know.  But what we do know is that one word from Jesus gets results.  The Word of Jesus gets results in human ears and hearts—even in ears shut tight by sin.

          And as that mute man began to speak plainly, eloquently, and with great articulation, the people in that place were amazed beyond all measure, declaring of Jesus, “He has done all things well.”  That word, “well,” goes all the way back to creation—back to Genesis chapter one where God surveyed all that He had created and declared it to be “very good.”  God’s “very good” creation was ruined and destroyed by sin and its wages.  But now God has come among us in the flesh of Jesus Christ to make all things new—to make deaf ears hear and mute tongues sing for joy.  He has indeed done all things well, wonderfully, beautifully, perfectly.  And He’s done them all for you.

          I’m sure there were plenty of other deaf people in the city where this man was healed—more with speech disabilities, more with head injuries and strokes, more with what we today call dyslexia, autism, and other communication disorders.  Jesus didn’t heal them all.  And they are still among us today—people whose hearing and speaking is impaired.  So what do we do about all of them?  We love them.  We thank God for them.  We join with them to ease their isolation just as Jesus joined His life to ours.  And we pray for them—not dictating when or how the healing may come—but trusting that these dear souls who live in isolation today will one day rejoice to be surrounded by angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, cheering them onward and upward as they finish their course in faith.

          Jesus came to do more than open the ears of one afflicted man.  Jesus came to open the kingdom of heaven—and to do it for all believers—for sinners who could never make it there on their own.  But this grand opening would require His very life to be sacrificed for sinners.  Jesus groaned as He healed the man in today’s text, and He would groan again on Good Friday, as He bore the curse of our sinful ears and tongues.  He surrendered to it all as your substitute.  But from the cross of Christ rings out that wonderful word:  Ephphatha, be opened.  For the death of Jesus has opened heaven for you.  There God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting your sins against you.

          We haven’t heard the last of this word, Ephphatha.  It will echo on until that glorious day when Jesus will call you from your grave.  “Ephphatha,” He will say.  “Be opened.”  And then, miracle of miracles, we will all be gathered around the throne of God in robes washed white in the blood of the Lamb.  And wonder of wonders, we poor sinners will hear Jesus declaring that through faith in Him we have done all things well.  On that day none of us will ever be alone again.  The autistic, the dyslexic, the deaf and mute:  all will hear.  All will be heard, and known, and loved.  All will surely say:  Worthy is the Lamb who was slain!  He has done all things well. 

          In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

 

The Heart of the Matter

Jesu Juva

St. Mark 7:14-23                                                                

August 29, 2021

Proper 17B                                 

 Dear saints of our Savior~

          It’s tough to find a religion that doesn’t have a use for food.  Food and religion go together, it seems.  Even the ancient pagans had their feasts and festivals.  There was the annual Passover meal in the Old Testament—along with numerous other sacrifices of grain and animals (which would usually end up being eaten by someone).  In the New Testament we have the Lord’s Supper—a sacramental meal at the very heart of our faith.  And, it’s also true, that we can’t overlook all the potlucks, Easter breakfasts, and Lenten suppers which are synonymous with church basements and fellowship halls everywhere.  Food and religion go together.

          In fact, a lot of people can get downright religious about their food.  Foodies and dieticians can be rabidly religious, blessing every delectable morsel as if it were manna from heaven.  Some people see a cosmic struggle between good and evil playing out on the plate in front of them three times a day.  There are good carbs and evil carbs.  Good fats and evil fats.  Gluten-free, dairy-free, soy-free, sugar-free.  It can become a kind of religion that says, if you put the right kinds of good food in your mouth, you will be pure, holy, and healthy.

          Today’s holy gospel plays out in the shadow of the Old Testament, which placed strict regulations on what you could not eat.  To put this in a way that you Wisconsinites can understand, OT dietary laws boiled down to this:  no Neuske bacon, no Usingers bratwurst.  Your Friday fish-fry was okay as long as the fish you were frying had fins and scales.  But Red Lobster would be off-limits, along with shrimp, scallops and crab.  The reason for these rules is debatable.  But this was part of what made Israel distinct and set apart as God’s holy people.  And the purpose of this distinct, holy people was to bring forth the Messiah.  And once that happened, all those dietary laws had served their purpose.  Israel’s fast was over; and the feast of salvation had begun in the person of Jesus Christ.

          And that brings us to this morning’s holy gospel.  Last week Jesus took on the misguided notion of the Pharisees that hand washing was the way to make your heart clean and to purify your soul.  This week Jesus takes on those who believed

that food could do that—that eating the right foods could make you clean and holy and pure; and that eating unclean food like shrimp and bacon made you unclean and unholy.

          But Jesus said, “Not so.”  There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.  In other words, it’s not about food, it’s not about what goes in, but what comes out.  This must have left everyone scratching their heads.  This wasn’t what they learned from their parents.  This wasn’t what the rabbis taught. Jesus was giving them a new and radical way of understanding how a person becomes clean or unclean—pure or defiled.

          Jesus then gave the disciples a bit of a biology lesson—a rather sophisticated biology lesson for first century ears.  What goes into a person from the outside can’t defile him because it never touches the heart.  Food doesn’t affect the will.  Food doesn’t shape our thoughts, words, and deeds.  The food we put in doesn’t affect that.

          It turns out, there’s something already inside of you that defiles you.  There’s something already inside of you that does corrupt and taint your thoughts, words, and deeds.  It’s not what goes in, it’s what comes out of your heart.  It’s what’s already there.  We call it original sin.  And it manifests itself in all kinds of actual sins. Jesus goes to the trouble to make a list, just to be sure we understand:  Evil thoughts.  Ever have one of those?  Sexual immorality.  Dare I ask?  Theft, murder, adultery, coveting.  Ever been an issue in your life?  But wait, there’s more: Wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness.  It’s quite a list.  And can anyone dare say that this list doesn’t hit close to home in some way?  And if you did dare to distance yourself from that list, well, you would be a liar and the truth would not be in you.

          Where does all the evil in the world come from?  Not from foods, but from the human heart, corrupted to the core by sin.  Original sin is the total corruption of our human nature that we inherited from our first parents.  For me, original sin used to be just an abstract concept—just a theoretical, hypothetical doctrine.  I accepted original sin the way a person might accept the theory of relativity, E=MC2—sure, sounds good to me.  But then I became a parent.  Nothing pounds home the universal truth of original sin better than having children.  For you don’t have to teach your children how to lie.  You don’t have to teach them how to covet.  You don’t have to supply them with evil thoughts.  All that sinful stuff—it just comes naturally.  Children have to learn how to sit up and roll over and say “please” and “thank you.”  But no child needs a lesson in sinning.  Every child has a limitless supply of sin in their very own hearts—which they inherited from their parents.  That’s the sad reality of original sin.

          What we all need is a new heart.  And food has nothing to do with it.  Fast all you want.  Follow the strictest diet.  Food won’t touch the heart.  Food can’t fix an unbelieving heart.  Only God can fix it.  Only God can give you a new and clean heart—a heart that beats in sync with the Holy Spirit—a heart set free from sin and death—a heart turned not toward evil but toward God—a heart not centered on self, but on God and your neighbor.  That’s the heart that Jesus Christ died to give to you.  The purity our hearts don’t have, the holiness our hearts don’t have—that purity and holiness can only come from Jesus, God’s pure and holy Lamb who takes away the sin of the world.  He became defiled with your sin.  He became unclean with your unrighteousness.  He bears it all away so that you don’t have to bear it.

          When you were baptized God the Holy Trinity gave you a new heart, a clean heart, a contrite heart that confesses the mess of sin and receives the gift of Jesus’ blood-bought forgiveness.  This new heart draws strength from the Word and promises of God.  This new heart is sustained and strengthened by the body and blood of Jesus.

          But as you well know, the old heart is still there.  God hasn’t yet completed the transplant; instead, the old heart and new heart are right there together.  We are at the same time saints . . . and sinners—clean and unclean—holy and defiled—good and evil.  This means that we live in a terrible tension.  But we also live beneath the cross of Christ’s forgiveness.  This means there’s never a time when we don’t have sin that needs forgiving; it means there’s never a sin that our Savior cannot forgive.

          Food set the Israelites apart in the Old Testament.  But there is also a food that sets you apart today.  There is a food that goes into you and sustains the believing heart.  There is a food that makes you holy.  It’s the food that Jesus gives you.  The bread that is His body.  The wine that is His blood.  This meal actually makes you holy, in a way that all the OT rules and regulations never could.

          For those who believe, all foods are clean.  All foods are a gift from God—given to be enjoyed and to strengthen us for service in our daily vocations.  Go ahead and eat healthy (or not).  Count your calories and carbs (or not).  But do not forget that though faith in Jesus, you have a place at the feast of feasts—at the marriage feast of the Lamb in His kingdom, which has no end. 

          

     In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

 

When Tradition Goes Bad

 

Jesu Juva

St. Mark 7:1-13                                                                         

August 22, 2021

Proper 16B             

 Dear saints of our Savior~

          At some point over the next few weeks, school age siblings will stand together on front porches, wearing new clothes, sporting new backpacks, and brandishing sharpened pencils.  And someone—usually Mom—will take a picture.  The first-day-of-school picture is a tradition for many families.  It’s a way of marking time—a way of measuring just how quickly those children grow up.  Traditions like this one serve a good and loving purpose.

          Traditions are terribly important.  Tradition can be a way of carrying something forward from one generation to the next.  Every family has traditions.  Schools and sporting events have traditions.  The church—this congregation—has traditions.  Pastors often joke that it’s easier to change a doctrine than to change a tradition in the church.  It’s risky to mess with tradition.  The pastor who unilaterally changes the time of the Sunday service or, the pastor who decides to omit the singing of “Silent Night” on Christmas Eve—well, such a pastor shouldn’t be surprised when a mob with pitchforks and torches begins to gather on the lawn in front of the parsonage.  Why?  Because that pastor is tinkering with tradition.

          The power of tradition is undeniable.  And that power can serve a positive purpose.  G. K. Chesterton wrote of how tradition gives a voice to our ancestors—to those who have gone before us.  He called tradition “the democracy of the dead. . . . Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant [group] who merely happen to be walking around.”  We do well to recognize the positive power of tradition, especially at a time when our culture is abandoning traditions once held sacred, opting for the un-traditional when it comes to marriage, family, sex, and the sanctity of life.  Tradition ensures that those who came before us—that those far wiser than us—that they still have a voice.  And only a fool would ignore that voice.

          But today’s text from Mark 7 has a slightly different take on tradition.  Tradition can take on a life of its own.  When tradition becomes the most important thing—when manmade traditions are elevated over and above the clear commandments of God—well, that’s when tradition goes bad.  That’s the trouble with tradition.  That’s why Jesus accused the Pharisees of rejecting the commandments of God in favor of their own clever and convenient traditions.

          Let me tell you about some of the ways tradition can bring trouble.  One danger is that we make tradition into a museum or, worse, a mausoleum—a collection of dead and dusty things that people come to look at and maybe admire—but never pick up and use.  It’s like when Lutherans take the traditional point of view that the Bible is the Word of God—“Here I stand, I can do no other.”  But when those same Lutherans never open their Bibles to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the contents, well, that spells trouble.

          At other times, tradition can become a hiding place when we’re afraid.  When “change and decay” all around we see—when the whole world is coming apart at the seams—it feels good to hide behind what’s old and familiar and comforting.  It’s a kind of nostalgia, like going back to your old hometown and sleeping in your old childhood bedroom when you just can’t handle reality.

          Tradition can also lead us away from God and away from His will.  That’s what happens when tradition takes over—when tradition hijacks the faith once delivered to the saints.  That’s what Jesus encountered in this morning’s holy gospel.  It all began with the observation that Jesus’ disciples were careless about washing their hands.  The tradition was that you did not eat until you had ritually washed your hands.  (And the word used here for washing is actually “baptize.”)  And not only were you supposed to “baptize” your hands, but also your cups and pots and pans and even the cushions you sat on.  This washing had nothing to do with good hygiene or viruses—the way your mother used to remind you to wash your hands before supper.  This was “religious hygiene,” an attempt to be spiritually pure by your own doing and washing.  This is precisely how the Pharisees operated.  They were steeped in tradition and in self-purification.  They had come up with 613 traditions to do—and not do—in order to make themselves righteous and pure before God.  Tradition had taken over.

          But for Jesus, tradition is always trumped by faith.  Repentance also trumps tradition.  And so Jesus promptly skewered all 613 traditions of the Pharisees with one deadly sentence of Law from the Prophet Isaiah:  This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.  It’s kind of fun to watch Jesus level the opposition, using their own playbook to do so. 

          It’s fun, that is, until you realize how often we do the very same thing.  We honor God with moving lips but our hearts are somewhere else—at work, at play, at brunch, on the golf course, up north.  We treat the divine service like tailgating fans at Miller Park—casually arriving late, and then leaving early.  We put in our time, do our religious duty.  But our hearts are far from the Lord, even on Sunday morning.  We sing our hymns, we speak and sing every word as it’s printed in the official hymnal of the LCMS.  We say all the right words and all the good words.  BUT, these wandering, hardened, unbelieving, ungrateful hearts of ours are always roaming somewhere else.  That’s the hard reality of our sinful hearts.  And it’s awfully easy to use tradition to build a wall around those hearts so that no one, including God, can get to them.

          Whenever we use “tradition” to get in good with God, or to justify ourselves before God like the Pharisees did, we have slipped into a kind of idolatry where our lips are close to God, dripping with all the right words, but our hearts are all tied up with self-purification and self-justification.

          The Pharisees had an interesting religious tradition:  If you devoted your entire investment portfolio and savings to God (if you declared it to be “Corban,” given to God,) then you were off the hook for supporting your aging parents.  You could get away scot-free with dishonoring your mother and father—with not lifting a financial finger to help them—with keeping all your money for yourself—just by applying a thin veneer of religious tradition.

          We’re pretty good at schmearing that same religious varnish all over our own sins—to dress them up and excuse them—whether it’s our sins of sexual immorality, or justifying some petty theft, or our drunkenness, or our gossip, lies, slanders, anger and pettiness.  But when your main concern is justifying yourself—you just may lose the justification that Jesus gives by grace, through faith, for His own sake.

          The Pharisees missed it.  With all their religious regulations and traditions, they missed the one needful thing.  They missed Jesus.  They missed the mercy of God that was theirs in Jesus.  They missed the true cleansing and purification that all their ceremonial washings and baptizings could never achieve.  They missed the most wonderful thing God has ever done, and will ever do, for the world—the

sending of His beloved Son in the flesh to be our Savior—to suffer and die in our stead, and to open the kingdom of heaven to all believers.  They were so busy with their traditions that they missed the great good news that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—not saints!—that He had come NOT to call the righteous, but sinners.

          They missed it; but you don’t have to.  For when you cut through all the clutter of tradition, what’s left is the clear and simple command of God:  “Repent.”  Turn.  Do a one-eighty.  Come to a new way of thinking—a way of thinking that clings in faith to the clear words and promises of God.  Take refuge in the washing that God Himself has established to name you and cleanse you as His own dear child.  For your baptism is so much more than a quaint tradition.  It is the power of God manifested daily in your body and soul.  Eat the bread that is His body; and drink the wine that is His blood, as He bids us do in His own testament. For the Lord’s Supper is no mere tradition.  It is sacred sustenance for body and soul that will sustain you in faith to the life of the world to come.

          In Jesus—with faith in Jesus—you DO ACTUALLY keep the commandments of God.  For by faith you now have Jesus’ perfect record of obedience as your own perfect record.  That perfect record can never be achieved by what you do, by how good you are, or by the traditions you keep.  It is simply a gift, poured into your heart by the Holy Spirit.  May our Lord bless your receiving of that gift now and always. 

          In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.